Upgrade

Our new camera arrived last week! With the London/Paris trip slowly approaching, we decided that we needed a new camera to capture all the loveliness that we are expecting to see!  With that in mind, we went with the Canon EOS Rebel T2i for our new family camera.  We have a lot to learn, but we tested it out this weekend on a trip down to Atlanta to visit the family and celebrate my mom's upcoming birthday.  

Troy and I hope to catch a class before London so that we can get the most out of the fancy new camera.  I will say, even with my simple "no-flash, point & click" pictures (like the one above!) this weekend, the quality is one million times better than my usual iPhone and small digital camera pictures! 

See...

 

Miyah loves her some Uncle Troy...but hey, I can't blame her! He's so lovable!

Also, Miyah is crawling ya'll!!! I could not believe it! She is crawling (fast!!) and puling up.  That means, most likely, the next time that I see her, she will be walking.  Oh goodness, what's next, college?! Too fast!  But anywho, as you can see from the last picture, I took mom to Ici Paris, the same spa we visited last year for her birthday, for mother-daughter massages! It was great!! 

We ended the day with dinner at Flip where I had the one-of-a-kind Krispy Kreme milkshake! 

Oh, and speaking of delicious sweet things, mom also requested my famous lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese icing.  My friends request that I bake this more than anything else so I actually hadn't baked them in over a year to give them a rest.  This camera (we've named the camera Lea after the fabulous photographer who did our wedding pictures) took the best cupcake pictures I've ever taken! And again, this is just on a basic "no flash" setting.  I have not even come to understand all of the personalized settings.

 making the icing...

So, I realized, mid-baking, that I was out of piping bags and cutting a hole in a ziploc bag to use my piping tools failed, so my bootleg attempt to ice the cupcakes was just cut a hole in a Ziploc bag and squeeze the icing through the hole...

After chilling in the fridge over night. Packed and ready to go to Georgia...

Also, let me just say this--this was my first time making cupcakes with Gretel, my stand mixer.  WOW!! So much easier!!!!!!  I almost didn't know what to do with myself when I wasn't personally mixing things with a hand mixer! So great!!  Stand mixer = yet another major upgrade!

Yay for the upgrade (and double yay for an excellent Saturday),

SG

Miyah Comes to Visit

Now it's time for me to play catch up and dish about some of the funnings that have been going on.  The first weekend in February Troy and I kept our then- 5 month old niece.  This was our first time ever having an infant in our home overnight!  So here's a summary of what went down...

The Good

Miyah is just lovely! I love being an auntie so much and being able to be a part of her life since day 1!  She only cries when she's hungry or you try to get in her nose and de-clog it.  

My BFFs are the BEST! Charity and Regina visited and we took turns on Miyah duty while the other two of us worked on cooking a big family dinner!  Troy also pitched in too! It really was one of the best weekends of my entire life! Family, friends AND food. Doesn't get much better than that.

The Bad

Having to wake up at 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.  But seeing Miyah made it all worth it!  She is just so precious!! Have I mentioned how much I love being an auntie? So really, no "bad"....but there was some ugly! More on that below!!!

 3 a.m. doing happy baby pose! Literally. It's my least favorite yoga pose.

7a.m. wide awake

The Ugly

The poop!! And LOTS of it.  Miyah is teething and I am told that means runnier and yuckier poo.  Well, there were many encounters with yellow poo and that was NOT my cup of tea.  I changed a lot of diapers!  

And here is a picture of Charity cleaning poop off of her skirt because the poop sometimes escaped the diaper!

You see this picture below?  It was taken on Sunday morning just before leaving the house to head to Sunday School.  Well, literally 3 minutes later in the car, those nice white tights were filled with yellow poop.  And I had to change her as soon as we arrived to church.

But who wouldn't love this face?  Even with all the poop!

So grateful to be an auntie,

SG

p.s. speaking of being a proud auntie, I must brag some more on my niece Mekala (remember her from this post and this one) she's been chosen as her high school's representative in a Medical Conference to be held in Atlanta this spring and I am just so proud of her!!  Have I mentioned how much I love being an auntie? Just making sure we're clear on that...

Guess What We Just Did?...

I'll give you a few hints...

Any guesses? :-)  Welp folks, we just booked our tickets on the EuroStar which will take us from London to Paris later this year!!! The Grants are going to London and Paris!!  We're super excited and it's just one of the MANY amazingly exciting things we're looking forward to in 2012!!  And I have so much to share with you so stay tuned!! 

I can't wait to share every thing that I've learned so far!  I hope that it can be a help to anyone out there looking to travel to Europe in the near future! For now, I'm off to get some rest. 

Au revoir!,

SG

picture sources: London's Tower Bridge, EuroStar, Eiffel Tower

I Am Alive...

I promise. And I am still a blogger.  I have fun post ideas dancing in my head and they are on the way.  I just have to make it through this week and I will be somewhat back to a normal schedule and can get back to writing!!!

Forgive me?
SG

Music To My Ears!...

Gretel's First Spin!! 

I love her!,

SG

365 More Days....

of being a "twenty-something!"  Today I turned the big 2-9! I am so grateful to see a new age! I'm enjoying a little couch time (while Troy hangs curtains in the living room) to share with you some details about my stupendous birthday weekend!

I'm SUPER excited about my birthday gift from Troy...

YES!! That's right folks! I'm FINALLY the owner of a KitchenAid Stand Mixer!! I've wanted one for years!!  Her name is Gretel!! And she looks so nice in the kitchen.  I'll have more pictures later, but here's one I snapped on the iPhone after setting her up on Friday night.

Then, if Friday's fun gift wasn't enough, on Saturday my BFF's spoiled me with some quality time, a beautiful cake, and birthday decorations! I came home from Publix and to my surprise Regina had decorated the living room.

 

And Allison brought cake!!! Which I love! Check out the Celtics green!

Us girls then headed to a private yoga class at my yoga studio which was a very light class just to ease them into the yoga practice that I oh so love! All smiles afterwards.

After a good workout of course you need food. So off to PF Chang's to pick up our to-go order and head back to the house to eat and relax.

Regina enjoyed the balloons as you can see in this picture. Balloon volleyball.

After lots of movie and tv-watching, some games, LOTS of laughter and lounging around the house we finally headed out to dinner before calling it a night.

It's been a great weekend and I'm so blessed that these three ladies took time out of their busy schedules to celebrate with me.  As for Gretel, thanks to a gift card from Charity, I plan to get the ice cream maker attachment to Gretel soon!!! I had just pinned it on Pinterest this week!  That Charity, she knows me so well!! 

Alrighty folks, thanks for tuning in on the birthday details. It's been a great one!  So grateful to Jesus for EVERYTHING!  He's given me such a beautiful life filled with joy, peace, and love.  And for that, I owe Him EVERYTHING!!  So, here's to this new year and seeing all the many ways in which He continues to develop me!  I'm beyond excited about it!!

29 and counting,

SG

Whistle While You Work...

the frame project continues....

and I'm SUPER excited to finally have found a pillow set up on the bed that I like.  I've been playing around with various throw pillows for months.  I think, for now, we have a winner with these shams I purchased from West Elm this weekend.

I felt bad about tossing the blue pillows from the bed so they are on the ottoman in the meantime.  Looks so much better.  I also rolled down the duvet so the bed wouldn't be as puffy looking.  Still a work in progress but I like it 10 times better than how it looked before.

Okay, back to work. Time to do some measurements on the wall!

*whistling*,

SG